A Little Trip Down Memory Lane

…for my Dad, because he does pop in here from time to time.

During the 60s and 70s, Hallcraft Homes was one of the biggest homebuilders in the Phoenix metro area. For many of those years, my dad worked as their chief designer. You can't spit in Phoenix without hitting his work, and he's perhaps the most recognized but unknown designer in the city's residential history. Years ago he was questioning what he'd done in his life and I pointed this out to him. "But no one knows they're my designs!"

I responded, "Not now," but who knows what will happen in the future?

Years ago I visited the old neighborhood and happened to strike up a conversation with the then-owner of the house we lived in—a Hallcraft, naturally—when I was in high school and college. He was thrilled to meet the son of the designer and pointed out there was a quite a growing fan-base for that particular model, the "Horizon." (The model was even seen in Raising Arizona.)

I made the mistake of accepting his invitation to come in and take a look at the old homestead. I was surprised that with twenty plus years having passed, much of what I remembered about it was still intact, but the beautiful deck my dad had built out back was gone, as was the swimming pool my parents had installed about a year before I moved out. When people say you can never go home, they mean it.

But I digress…

I found these photos online while searching for pictures of the "Hallcraft Showcase of Homes." Unfortunately, it seems there are no surviving photos—or at least nothing online. I find this kind of unusual, because at the time (the late 1960s) the place was unique in that it provided a single location where buyers could tour all of Hallcraft's current single-family homes and close a deal without having to drive around to each of the far-flung subdivisions. With my budding interest in architecture and design, I always found it to be a bit of a wonderland, especially when discontinued designs were torn down or hauled away and new ones were built in their place. It also must have been a great money-saver for the company, because they only had to decorate a single set of model homes, not dozens. (There were still models to tour in each subdivision, but they weren't decorated.) Sadly, the place was razed in the mid 1970s and like so many other pieces of Phoenix history is now only a fading memory.